


always been blue

by anniebibananie (alindy)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Poetry, Tattoos, i hate this but whatcha gonna do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 20:33:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alindy/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: Dex gets a line of poetry Nursey wrote into his birthday card tattooed on his arm. How was he supposed to know where it came from?





	always been blue

**Author's Note:**

> i got an idea so i wrote this idk if it's good wELp

The room was large and smelled vaguely of smoke and something earthy. Dex eyed the art on all the walls, all of the pictures of previous tattoos, and he didn’t feel as uncomfortable as he had been worried he was going to. 

“You’re really going to do this?” Chowder asked. It wasn't judgmental, though, just supportive. 

“Yeah,” Dex said, leaning against the glass counter. He had brought Chowder as a sort of moral support (though, he wouldn’t want to admit it necessarily). Now that he was there, though, he was actually feeling  _ more  _ comfortable in his decision. 

It had started half a month ago the day after his birthday, when him, Chowder, and Nursey were sitting around in Chowder’s room shooting the shit. Dex was supposed to be working on an obligatory english essay for the Gen Ed class he was in, but it was so less interesting than talking to his friends. He was feeling loose for once, and he didn't want to have to face work again, yet.

“So, it didn’t hurt?” Chowder asked, looking up at Nursey from where his head was rested on his thigh. 

Dex was jealous of the casual intimacy, simply because he was fairly sure he would never get to the point where he would be able to match it, no matter how hard he tried. It was enough to be with them, though, and to take all that the two of them gave out. 

They were looking at the tattoo covering Nursey’s shoulder and down half of his arm. It was beautiful, highly-detailed, and when you looked close enough you could see snippets of words interlaced with the movements of the tattoo. The first time Dex had seen it, he had wanted to hold Nursey’s warm flesh between his palms and soak in every word. 

He would never, obviously. He had grunted and told him it was cool. He totally didn’t stumble over his words, fantasize what it would be like to trail his fingers over every word of poetry and feel the heat of him beneath him. Nothing at all like that. 

Nursey had shrugged. “I mean it didn’t feel  _ good _ , but it was all worth it for how I felt afterward.” 

“How was that?” Dex asked. Nursey looked up, surprised at his curiosity perhaps. 

“Powerful. Kinda like art.” Nursey reached up a hand and scratched at the back of his neck, almost as if he was embarrassed. “It just made me feel more me.” 

“That’s sick, man,” Chowder said, looking up at him with a dopey, friendly smile. 

When Nursey looked over at Dex, as if expecting a chirp, Dex nodded. He wondered what it would feel like to have it on his own body. Most of his life he had felt awkward in his own limbs—he didn’t hate his body, but he felt like he took up too much space in a wrong sort of way. His ears were too big and his hair too red and his freckles too  _ everywhere.  _ When Dex had wanted to just disappear, everything else about him had made it feel impossible. 

He liked the idea of having something that spoke to him painted on his skin for the world to see—then they could see what he wanted the world to see, not what he had been forced to present. 

“I’m going to grab the leftover cake from yesterday,” Chowder said. “Should I bring it up with forks?”

“Yes,” Nursey and Dex agreed instantly, the three of them dissolving into quick laughter as Chowder propped up onto his feet to go retrieve it. 

Then, the two sat in the silence left behind. Nursey bit his lip.

“You like my tattoo, Poindexter?” Nursey asked, raising a brow. In another situation, it would almost be seductive, but Dex knew he liked to prod Dex as if he was a sleeping bear. It was part of what their friendship had grown into. 

“It’s definitely you,” Dex said. He looked down at the pale skin of his hands and the freckles that covered his knuckles before looking back up at Nursey. “It’s really nice.” 

Nursey smiled—the sort of open, free smile that were much more often aimed at Chowder or the rest of the team then him, the sort that always made Dex feel like he had won something special. 

“I didn’t give you your birthday card yesterday,” he said, reaching behind himself into his bag. He pulled out a pastel yellow envelope, Dex’s name scrawled out in beautiful penmanship, and handed it back to him. “Here.” 

Dex took it cautiously into his hands. “You got me a card?” Dex asked as he tilted his head curiously to the side. Nursey nodded, and Dex opened it. 

The card itself wasn’t that wild. The front was an easy picture of the sea and inside the only printed words were  _ Happy Birthday _ , but Nursey had taken the time to inscribe a poem. Dex’s eyes wrapped themselves around the words, pulling them in and searching for meaning between their curves. Nursey had finished it off with a flourish;  _ Happy Birthday, Dex. Definitely not the best d-man a dude could ask for, but I wouldn’t trade you for anyone. Derek Nurse (the actual best d-man a dude could ask for).  _

Dex cleared his throat. He wanted to read the poem more. Poetry wasn’t his speed. More than books, poetry was something cryptic and hard to dissect. Part of him had always thought of it as a stuffy, high-brow sort of activity. Partially, that was why Dex never wanted to read anything Nursey wrote. What if he didn’t like it? What if he didn’t understand it? 

Dex trusted that Nursey was probably good at what he did, and he didn’t need Dex’s approval to know that. 

Chowder burst through the door with half of a cake in one hand and three forks in the other. “Is it bad that I assumed we could just eat straight from the cake? It’s your birthday cake, Dex, you get dibs on it, right?”   


“Hell yeah, I do,” Dex said. He caught the fork Chowder threw at him. As Chowder settled back into his spot, he caught Nursey’s eyes. 

_ Thank you,  _ he mouthed, trying to make it as genuine as possible. Nursey beamed back at him, and he assumed he had done something right. 

It wasn’t until later, once Nursey was asleep, that Dex pulled the card back out to look at the words. He wanted time to truly pour over them without letting Nursey know what he was doing. There was something embarrassing and also intimate about his desire to soak in the words and their meaning. 

 

_ There was a boy, the fishermen knew,  _

_ who wrapped his salt stained hands  _

_ around all the slippery scales of the sea,  _

_ because he knew how to catch things that  _

_ never wanted to be caught. There was a boy,  _

_ who no one else could know, who wished  _

_ for hands that knew how to hold things that  _

_ wanted to stay—dry, warm, not harsh _

_ brutalities of a world he could never step into. _

 

_ He loved the sea—powerful, pulsing, inescapable. _

_ Soft and serene, too. How could he know that the  _

_ salt was running in his own veins, that he prayed _

_ to the altar of his own blood, own love, own demise _

 

_ could you hope to be a  _

_ rock just to feel the crash of  _

_ waves beat you down, would _

_ you willingly let someone carve _

_ into you if only to feel their  _

_ power against your curving lines _

_ ( is it okay to be destroyed if you _

_ wish it? if you ask for it? ) _

 

_ oh salty sweet don’t listen to the forecast, _

_ for storms can never define you.  _

_ sand and sea and rocks and copper shells,  _

_ my favorite color has always been blue.  _

 

Dex liked the imagery of the sea, and he wasn’t sure if Nursey had been attempting to compare him to the waves or it was just convenient when the card had already had a picture of water on the front. The ocean had always meant so much to Dex, though, and the fact that Nursey had known that and thought to put it into a card for him made his heart feel tight and painful. 

God, feelings were the worst. Nursey was asleep only a few feet away from him. He wanted to ask him about what the words had meant, what he had thought about when writing them down with painstaking accuracy and precision into the cardstock. He wouldn’t, though, because that would require admitting to an emotional intimacy he wasn’t comfortable with. 

_ My favorite color has always been blue.  _ He couldn’t stop thinking about the words—how much he longed for the bite of the sea, the relief that it gave him. It was a strange line alone, maybe, but he understood what Nursey said when he talked about his tattoo making him feel more him. The line of that poem spoke to him.

That was where the idea for the tattoo started, really, and now Dex was here with a loose drawing of a swelling wave he wanted to get on his bicep. The words would sit underneath in a bold typeface. He didn’t want it flashy or calligraphic, just simple and straightforward like him. 

Chowder was allowed to come sit beside Dex as he laid on the table, arm twisted at a slightly awkward angle. It had taken a lot of searching for Dex to find the right tattoo artist. He didn’t want to half-ass this, and he wanted someone who could evoke the exact sort of feeling he wanted without any color at all. 

“I haven’t seen this line before,” the tattoo artist said as he paused the gun to take a drink of water, “where is it from?” 

“A poem my friend gave to me for my birthday,” Dex said. 

“Wait, Nursey gave you that poem?” Chowder asked. 

Dex twisted to see him in the light of the studio. “Yeah. It was in the card from him.” 

“Does he know?” 

“Nah, didn’t want him getting a big head,” Dex joked. He bit the inside of his cheek, thinking about the moment when Nursey would finally see what he had done. “Maybe it’ll be kind of like a surprise.” 

“Nursey will never let you live it down,” Chowder said casually as he scrolled through his phone. “He’s going to think he’s converted you to a poetry junkie.”

Dex thought maybe that would be okay. He was never going to get poetry, probably never fully like it, but Nursey had shown him something that made him feel like he could understand parts of himself better. He hated to get metaphorical or philosophical, but the poem had felt  _ tailored  _ for him. 

The sea was his favorite metaphor because it was outwardly terrifying and strong, but it was beautiful, too. Dex felt like a crashing collision of waves most days, but there were moments he felt the stillness of a calm sea on others. It made him want to love the many facets of himself, despite how hard he could find that. 

He couldn’t believe Nursey had made him so introspective. Usually, he buried all of these thoughts as far down as they could go. With great care and incredible stubbornness. Who knew joining the  _ hockey  _ team was what was going to make him a softer human being. 

* * *

All Dex wanted to do was get up to the bathroom by his room and take off the bandage so he could stare at the lines on his arms again. The movement of the waves on his bicep were transfixing, and the font the artist and him had settled on was perfect for what he needed.

He understood what Nursey had meant when he said he felt more him to an even greater degree, because with the sea on his arms and his love openly denoted underneath it he felt sort of unstoppable. 

“You got a tattoo?” Bitty asked as him and Chowder entered. 

“It’s ‘swaesome!” Chowder exclaimed. “Totally cool.”

“I can’t wait to see it,” Bitty said, smiling at the pair. “Dinner is going to be ready in a half hour, so you two should wash up and help set the table before everyone starts shuffling in.”

“You got it, Bits,” Dex said, pushing Chowder to the closest bathroom. 

Then Dex took the stairs up two at a time to get to the second floor bathroom. He pushed through the door and locked it behind him, moving straight for the mirror. Unsticking the tape, he watched the tattoo come into shape again. It was just as beautiful as it had been earlier, and now that he was staring at it he felt more certain in his decision. 

Dex washed it off briefly before folding up his sleeve so the tattoo could have some space to breathe. It was already a bit sore, but he knew it would be bearable to let it heal. He rushed out the door, ready to go do his part in helping Chowder set the table, when he ran into Nursey. 

Nursey was already tipping forward, and Dex reached out to his arms to haul him back into a standing position. They hovered in each other's space for a moment. 

“Dude,” Dex said. “You almost fell down the stairs.” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Nursey said, about to laugh when his eyes caught on the ink of Dex’s arm. His eyes widened. 

“Oh, it’s my new tattoo. You like it?” Dex asked. He shuffled from foot to foot, trying to keep his nerves at bay. “The poem you wrote in my card kinda inspired me. By the way, who wrote it? I was trying to google it but wasn’t sure.” 

“I–” Nursey finally tore his eyes away from the tattoo to scan Dex’s face. 

It felt bizarrely intimate. 

“I’m sorry,” Nursey finally said. “I mean, I am.” 

“You are what?” Dex asked, eyebrows crashing together. “Sorry? Why?”   


“No, I mean…” Nursey was rattled, and Dex was unused to seeing him anything but composed and amicable. “I wrote the poem.” 

Dex felt his whole body freeze.  _ My favorite color has always been blue.  _ Those words, the whole sentiment, had been crafted by Nursey himself. The reason the words felt tailored to everything Dex felt was because Nursey had wrote it  _ for him.  _ That meant Nursey knew him that well, that he had sat down and written those words thinking about Dex. 

And Dex had gotten it tattooed on his arm, forever, permanent. Nursey’s poetry was on his bicep. 

“Boys! Come help, food is almost ready,” Bitty called. 

“I…” Dex didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to confront that Nursey could see the weird, internal parts of himself. He didn’t know how to respond to that. “We gotta help.” 

“Yeah,” Nursey said, shaking his head as if shaking off a thought, swimming back to the surface to the conversation they were having now. “Yeah, sure, man.” 

Dex wasn’t fleeing. He was just taking his time. He was pondering words. Nursey was the one who was good with them, not Dex. It was okay that he needed a bit more time to figure it out. 

* * *

Dinner was awkward, mostly because Dex was purposefully avoiding every look Nursey shot him across the table. Also, though, because every time a member of the team complimented his tattoo he could feel Nursey’s eyes on him with extra heat.  _ My favorite color has always been blue.  _ The words rattled around his head like buzzing bees.

Dex bypassed pie in order to go up to his room and have some time to himself before he was going to have to continue the conversation with Nursey. How did one articulate the fact that you felt seen by someone you never thought saw you that well? Specifically not someone you  _ hoped  _ saw you that way, some days, when you were particularly vulnerable? 

He sat down on the bottom bunk, despite it being Nursey’s bed (too much potential danger of him slipping off the top), and tried to think about what words he could possibly say. Maybe he didn’t have to say anything? Maybe they could just pretend this wasn’t a thing. That was healthy, right?

“Fuck,” Dex muttered, reaching up to lightly touch the fragile aftermath of his tattoo. He couldn’t wait for it to be smooth flesh. 

The door opened. Dex looked up to see Nursey standing in the doorway, almost as if he was afraid to step through. 

There was a sort of energy Nursey carried when he was nervous that he tried desperately to cover up. Over the last three or so years Dex had gotten good at picking it up, mostly from a sense of it more than anything. Nursey always tried hard to be casual when he was anxious, more aloof, but he was jumpy, too. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you wrote that poem for me?” Dex asked, because he wasn’t good at beating around the bush. 

Nursey stepped closer and closed the door behind him, standing halfway between the now closed door and Dex on the bed. 

“I didn’t want to make it a big thing,” Nursey said. “I thought you might just know.” 

“It was beautiful,” Dex said. He hated that saying beautiful made him feel so uncomfortable, as if he was opening himself up in front of his roommate. Hadn’t he already done that, though? He had tattooed it right onto his arm. You couldn't get much more intimate than that. “It is, I mean.”

Nursey finally moved from the middle of the room to sit down besides Dex. The bed dipped. They were close enough next to each other that Dex was hyperaware of the way their thighs touched. 

There was a hand on Dex’s forearm, and he looked to find Nursey grasping lightly onto him. His other hand hovered over the tattoo, following the lines of it. His eyes were singularly focused on the lines and words of his tattoo. 

“My favorite color has always been blue,” Nursey whispered, almost as if he didn’t realize he was saying it aloud. His eyes snapped up to Dex’s, and his lips were curved up at the edge. Dex hated how beautiful and attractive it was to hear Nursey read his own words from Dex’s arm. “Do you know what that line really means?” 

“I liked it because it summed up why I liked the ocean so much,” Dex said. He cleared his throat, trying his hardest to keep his eyes on Nursey. “Why it reminds me of myself, I guess.” 

Nursey nodded along with his words, and his lips spread why. “It’s I love you.” 

“What?” Dex’s heart was in his throat. 

“You’re my favorite color,” Nursey said. “You are blue, you are the ocean, you’re a bunch of poetry I’d never want to show you, but I also do. I’m not trying to make it weird, dude, or make you regret putting it on your body, but I couldn’t stare at your tattoo everyday and not tell you that you basically have my love confession tattooed on your bicep.” 

“Holy fuck,” Dex said. Nursey loved him. His poem was a confession, and Dex had been blind enough to get it tattooed on his body. There was something, though, about the fact that Dex had picked the one line out of the whole poem that was  _ I love you.  _ That couldn't be a coincidence. “I never thought…”

Nursey looked away, shrugging as if it wasn’t a big thing, but Dex could feel the way his body shook. “It doesn’t have to change anything.”

“It can’t not,” Dex said, the words sounding a bit harsher than he meant. 

“Dude, I’m sorry. I–”

“No,” Dex said with a sigh. He reached out and interlaced his fingers with Nursey’s and tightened his grip. “I mean… I’m really bad at this, but–”

“Really?” Nursey looked vulnerable, and Dex wanted to hold him. 

Instead, he moved forward and kissed Nursey. He kissed him because Nursey had written him a poem that made him feel so many things, that made him feel like he could be himself in the all that that was, and it had all been an I love you. Dex didn’t deserve that. And yet, he was lucky enough to feel it filling him whole. 

Nursey was quick to respond, reaching out and holding onto the sides of Dex’s face. Dex craved to be closer, and it seemed Nursey wanted the same because he pulled him down on top of him. Dex slotted between Nursey’s legs and pushed up so he could get the best angle he could to kiss him. 

He pulled back, stopping to peck one last kiss on his lips before saying, “Really. Without a doubt.” 

Nursey beamed. It was Dex’s favorite thing to see. “Do you know how  _ hot  _ it is that you have a tattoo and that it’s  _ my  _ poetry? Like, really, truly,  _ so hot _ .” 

“It’s your fault for getting that in the first place,” Dex said through a smile, eyeing his tattoo. “You can’t just be that hot and that much and not expect me to fall in love with you.” 

“You love me, too?” Nursey asked, eyes twinkling. 

“Yes. Obviously,” Dex said. “Your poetry is on my arm forever. Duh.” 

“But you didn’t  _ know _ that,” Nursey said. 

“Shh,” Dex said, bending closer until their lips were only a fraction apart, “don’t ruin the story.” 

Nursey broke the gap, kissing him with all he could manage. His hands moved around Dex’s neck, crawling into his shortened hair and scratching lightly at his scalp. Dex couldn’t help the small moan that released from his lips. 

“That is hot. You are hot,” Nursey said as he pulled back, breathless. “I can’t wait until your tattoo is healed, and I can kiss every inch of it.” 

“Good idea,” Dex said, bending forward to kiss Nursey on the shoulder where his own tattoo sat. “You’re actually pretty smart.” 

“Wow, thanks.” His smile was unbearably bright. 

“I love you,” Dex said like a breath of fresh air over a salty sea, punctuating it with a kiss.

“I love you, too,” Nursey said, like the crash of waves against a rocky shore.

That's how Dex thought Nursey would describe it, anyways. How he would want him to. 

**Author's Note:**

> yeah idk dudes i just wrote this today it's entirely self indulgent i'm sorry also i don't write poetry so double sorry
> 
> find me on tumblr at [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


End file.
